A few large deals included Walmart’s acquisition of Flipkart for $16 billion, Alibaba’s investment in Bigbasket and Paytm, Tencent’s investment in Dream11, and Nasper’s investment in Byjus and Swiggy.

“This massive opportunity has been unlocked by the increasing number
of digital transactions, digital literacy and the rise of rural
e-commerce, growing use of vernacular content, adoption of the
omni-channel strategy, low mobile data tariffs coupled with data-driven
personalization,” says the report.

The stimulus provided by Digital India, Start-Up India and Make in
India also helped, it added and expects the trends in terms of
consolidation will continue in 2019 as well.

“Companies will need to consolidate to add more services and segments to expand the level of engagement with customers and leverage emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, blockchain and internet of things, among others, to service the market better,” it said.

A report last year revealed that blockchain startups in India have raised mere $5.3 million between January 2016 and April 2018, including & counting all funding options, sources, investment instruments etc.

Earlier this year, an another report by Venture Intelligence said that PE investments had already surpassed the previous high – $24.3 Billion across 734 deals in 2017 – in the first nine months of 2018, big ticket investments in Swiggy and Byju’s towards the end of the year catapulted the year’s investment tally by 36% year-on-year.